


Capture the Moon

by ArgentNoelle



Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [6]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Anger, Angst and Tragedy, Bigotry & Prejudice, Cold War, Death, Demon Deals, Demons, Evil, F/M, Family Feels, Fear, Friendship/Love, Gen, Government Agencies, Government Experimentation, Heavy Angst, Horror, Implied/Referenced Torture, Male-Female Friendship, Mystery, Mythology References, Names, Philosophy, Psychological Horror, References to Drugs, Self-Hatred, Self-Reflection, Tragedy, Truth, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 9,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26431747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle
Summary: 1961. The middle of the cold war. Helen, a government scientist who is involved in a demon contract, tries to make her way through the deadly intrigue of her work, convinced that any evil they do is for the greater good... or is it?
Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1044467
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. your robe

**Author's Note:**

> ! Warnings will appear BELOW each chapter, when relevant — I'll make a note of it above the chapter so you can scroll down if you want to read them :)
> 
> ~~~although, I will put ONE general warning here: this story deals with some ***DISTURBING THEMES & language*** [to a greater extent than you might expect having read the previous stories in this series]
> 
> ok, that out of the way... see chapter warnings at end of chapter XD

" _I love my native city, more than my own soul."_

— Niccolo Machiavelli

_Now: 1961_

**1/ your robe**

It was bright in these inner rooms. Lower levels. That's all Helen could think as she stared up into the ceiling, long rods of light crossed by metal strips, and the tiles around it, stained by water and neglect. It ought to be dark by rights, for there were no windows, and she was surprised by the fact that it distressed her. She'd never been an outdoors person. Not hardly.

Robert grunted, and spilled, and it was over. He thought she liked him. She must do, or she would have ordered her demon to kill him. Or perhaps it was merely that she tolerated Robert, who was, after all, only disgusting in petty, understandable ways. There was something comforting in that, she thought. Fixing their clothes under the harsh buzz of the lights, he offered her a cigarette and they smoked in silence.

"Hell of a day," Robert said at last. The words were dull, swallowed up by concrete. She breathed in tar.

"Yeah," she said. It was hard to remember a time that hadn't been; hard to remember the woman full of steely purpose who had gotten a job so secret and of such national importance. She'd known she deserved it as much as any of these men. She'd known she'd never have gotten it if it weren't for Jack, and she hated the demon, sometimes, for granting her wish. For reminding her how much he could do—how much she couldn't.

But she was a scientist. And this was war, moving with glacial inexorability, and there hadn't been anything else she knew she was so capable of; it was all worth it if only she could fight. If only she didn't die swallowed up by the concrete storeroom, where no Theseus could find his way. Fancies, of course. Just fancies. She knew the way out. She'd go home tonight; in three hours or four. If nothing else happened. If no one drugged her coffee on a lark. If she took coffee from the sad whirring machine in the corner of the room where her partners worked. If she didn't drug theirs. It was all a game, she had come to understand, and it was almost understandable, except that sometimes, reading over field notes like gibberish, full of holes before the censorship even kicked in, she wondered if they really were fighting the good fight. The end justified the means of course. She had to believe it, because no pure means had ever brought her anything she hadn't had to fight for by force.

Helen left first, slipping on her heels and walking out, putting away everything that wasn't the government scientist, as if she even knew what that was anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings!
> 
> 1) non-explicit sex
> 
> 2) references to drugs (non-consensual)
> 
> \+ don't worry, Ciel *is* in this story


	2. hidden more

Jack was waiting for her with the car when she finally left; her driver. She reminded herself he was nothing other; that there wasn't any reason to shiver and feel sick when he looked at her with eyes as flat as pennies. She slid into the back seat and wished that once, only once, he'd be late, be fallible, turn his attention somewhere else so she could hate him more, so she could fear him less.

"Now, mistress," Jack said slowly, persuasively. "You wouldn't really want that, would you?"

She hadn't spoken. She knew she hadn't spoken. Not yet, though there were words waiting behind the rusted lock of her throat.

"You bastard," she said. Her eyes watered. Tiredness. He handed her a handkerchief as he pulled out into traffic, one-handed, and she pressed it to her aching forehead, and saw the smudged circles of her makeup, turning to thick dust. A man had died today. A man brought in for his expertise, someone who didn't know the careful obsessive circles they stumbled in, someone who hadn't known to expect death if he refused to fight. But there was no reason to refuse to fight. The enemy was canny, and clever, and could be anywhere, and they had to strike first. But she had seen him die in the measuring glance that passed between Keith and Terence and Robert, and she hadn't participated, she knew she hadn't, but she had watched. And what should she have said, anyhow? Leave? Run? Take your family with you and hide? You should have said yes?

Alex, at least, had tried to say something. She'd seen him whispering at the door, hushed and urgent. The man's face, hearing him, had been full of dawning comprehension, and the horror that felt like spit, and the disgust—she knew it had nothing to do with her. It never had, not with these men, not here. Jack had seen to that with his wish, and sometimes as she walked down the endless labyrinth of halls she felt erased. He had been a good man, the man who had died. She knew it like she knew everyone else wasn't, like she knew she could never have been, even if she fit all the prerequisites.

He was not beautiful, Alex; nor handsome. Too thin of face and body, knobs under his pale skin like a shipwreck submerged under waves, as though he were hollow-boned like a bird. He should have looked fragile: with those ever-present dark bruises under his eyes, the uncertain way he was put together. But those eyes which were sea-green seemed startlingly present, burning like earth after a rain, with a life too much to be contained to one form; and he moved, not with difficulty, but as though the body was a thing he had forgotten, as though at any moment his feet might leave the ground, his arms become wings.

And his hair was the color of grain in the sun, brilliant and wild and shining, full of more life than the rest of him, or perhaps any of them. She hated him, for pulling her gaze, and though he seemed not to notice she knew he did. It made no sense to be angry, as though his whole shaking self, always coming down from something or on something, was just a pretty illusion. He was not beautiful, Alex, but he had all the pieces that they said ought to make him so. And somehow he was impossible to look away from anyhow.

Alex had changed nothing. The man he spoke to had still died; for the look that had passed between Keith and Terence and Robert, whom she had shagged in the storeroom under the bright lights, while she thought of nothing but the bright lights.

_Hell of a day._

They all were.


	3. small drawers

Helen turned the key beside her bed and pulled from the stand the battered old notebook. It was not hers, and the days when she had felt safe and comforted by her grandfather's scrawling hand were long over. She thought she had become something he would hate, and though he had been an officer on the force, she wasn't sure he would understand: how sometimes you need evil people, in order to do good. But maybe he would. Maybe he would try to save her, too.

She curled up under her thick blankets with the lamplight shining down, and read, as though she were a child, skating her finger under the cursive.

' _I feel a terrible pity for the poor boy. I try to remember that, when he acts the most infuriating person I've ever had to suffer orders from—I try to cling to those glimpses of a good heart, strangled so harsh and purposefully that it scares me._

' _I know his rank and power ought to be enough to scare me, but it doesn't. I've never been particularly affected by such things, even when I ought to. What terrifies me is knowing how dangerous he has_ chosen _to be, in spite of his nature, which points to an even deeper misguidance…_

' _The problem is, I see mine and my brother's younger self in him. Running heedlessly towards destruction, not realizing there's a way out. But how can he know of hope if no one is brave enough to show him?'_

"You don't understand anything, Frederick," Helen said. She tried to say it spitefully, as though they were in a conversation, as though he could add anything at all, being dead. She'd looked up to him, once. Making it from nothing. Trying so hard to do the right thing. She looked up to him still, and he spoke to her from empty pages as though he knew what she had done.

Jack knocked at the door and she closed the book, shoving it hastily back in its place, though she knew he must know. He knew everything. "I said I didn't want to be disturbed," she snapped.

Jack took that as answer enough to open the door, and peeked in, eyes carefully, politely downcast. He did everything for her. She had wanted anything but a servant, and she thought he knew; it amused him. "Your mother is calling."

"It's almost midnight," Helen said.

"She is, it seems, regrettably aware of your schedule. I presume it's a mother thing. Shall I tell her you're asleep?"

He watched her with that blank amusement, and she knew he would. If she asked. As though she was some kind of petulant child. "I'll get it," she said, unsteadily. When she sat up her vision swam. She was so tired. She wanted to sleep and not wake up. She'd get enough of that soon, wouldn't she? No need to rush. Not with Jack's eyes following her like a beetle's, following the steps her bare feet made on the tile floor, standing toes curled in the kitchen, back against the faded paper and looking out that small window onto a sliver of grey street and half a brick wall. "Mum?"

"Deepika, how nice to hear your voice," her mother said. Getting into it already; she wanted something. She always wanted something. Helen cleared her throat.

"It's Helen, mum."

There was silence. Her own breathing, and the crackle of static, and the cord, baby-blue and sterile, like hospital colors. Jack's shadow across the floor. He was in the doorway, not moving one step in or out as any ordinary human would feel the need; he just stood there between, waiting. Patiently. Cutting off every way out, with the efficiency of a tourniquet.

"We know you're busy," her mother said at last, and the naked desperation in it, small and lonely, made Helen's stomach twist again. "We know you're busy, little one, at your government job, and we don't want to interrupt, but you should think of your family sometime. Visit us. We won't be here forever, you know."

 _I'll die before you will_ , Helen thought. The blunt truth of it made her feel sick. Her head was swimming. She wanted to sleep. She'd been putting off her mother's injunctions to come visit for weeks, and she had polite and circuitous words that would do the same thing tonight, but speaking them felt impossible. Her hand, slippery with sweat, clenched around the phone. The cord swung out, ponderously. "I will. I'll come out this weekend, I promise. But I need to sleep now, mum, I can't talk, I'm sorry." She hung up; felt the press and _click_ as she shoved the receiver home. The kitchen looked bare and empty with the phone hung up. She stepped to the ceramic sink and turned the tap, quick and angry and too hard. Stuck her head under the water. A cold, uncaring river over her hair and the back of her shoulders, and she choked back a sob.

A soft tap of shoes behind her. Jack. His hands, warm against the cold water, brushed over her back and she flinched and stood still. He rubbed her skin, gently, like a parody of comfort. Massaging the knots away. Efficiently. Impersonally. He turned the tap off. When she turned around to face him he had a kitchen towel—new and clean—in his hand. He toweled off her hair. "I can do it myself," Helen said in a thready voice.

"Of course, mistress," Jack agreed. He didn't stop.

"It's only family," Helen said. "But why do they care? Dhruv will come. He always comes." That was her older brother—perfect. A man of moderate success, perhaps, if you considered that he never had a job high in government and never would, but in all the ways that mattered, he was perfect.


	4. no iron

Helen pressed her rust-red blazer and skirt carefully. Jack would have done it, if she had not; but there was something about the control, the crisp corners, wrinkles smoothed away, the heat, the way she had to stay calm and attentive at all points of the process, that helped her ready. It was a part of her routine, just as much as hair or makeup or stockings. In the other room, she could smell the breakfast that Jack made. She knew she would come in to something set flawlessly on a china plate, on the small square table in the space between the kitchen and the washer-dryer, and the one pair of windows with a view she liked. The buildings stopped below, just far enough down that the roofs skimmed by under her gaze, and above the smokestacks there was only sky, rising to an infinite height. There were three windows, floor to ceiling, and they could be cranked open, if she wished. Of course, that would let in the dirt and dust and so she rarely did. Still, the idea of it helped.

At breakfast she felt calm. Better. Last night she'd been in a state, but she'd slept well. She felt up for anything, almost, and she regretted that she hadn't put her mother off another week. She slipped on her heels at the door, rode down the elevator in silence. Jack had been there, in the flat, when she turned the key in the lock. He had been taking her dishes back into the kitchen, and she had heard them, and the water, and almost smelt the sharp soap. But he would be waiting with the car when she got down, and he was; as always. It was hardly more than a minor annoyance today. She could almost appreciate it.

The bare blank buildings opened for her as she held her pass at the door, and the guard at the front nodded without a single comment. They all took cars today. They were going to see the races.

* * *

It made her uncomfortable, the dogs. It was warm, muggy and warm today, unusually so. But it had rained on the way over. She'd brought boots from her office and they all tromped through the muddy field, looking ridiculous dressed for indoor work as they were. The weather was not kind to them, though it could have been crueler. It had stopped raining. Surrounded by boxy warehouses on one side and a long, low, open road, and on the other the grass, which could have held the illusion of an endless expanse if it were not for the high metal fences, topped with barbed wire. Their scientist, the dog-man, was mad, but she had gotten used to seeing people with fever eyes and a focussed obsession; they were all mad, weren't they; if you pressed too hard in the wrong place. She forgave it. Keith and Terance and Robert and Alex and her, and the dog-man, and the six dogs milling around with electric wires fused into their scalps. She watched them, vaguely, as the dog-man explained how it worked. She wondered if they knew, the dogs. What it would feel like to have electricity that wasn't your own driving you, onward and onward. Right now they looked ordinary. Not happy, but not beaten and starved. That was something. She tucked her fingers into the hook her purse made, and wished for a coat, though it was too hot for one. Her hat, if she tipped her face down, created a perfect half-moon of the muddy, squelchy ground and her feet, and the dogs.

"Well, men," said the dog-man, jovially, as though it included her. It probably did, Helen thought. That was how it worked, what Jack had done. They didn't question. "Take note!" And he flipped the switch in his hand, and the dogs were off, just as he instructed them. They moved, unnaturally focussed and too eager, and she wondered if they even felt the difference between their brain the way it was meant to be and this, if they knew they were being controlled or thought it their own impulse. She wondered what it looked like, in her own brain, the connection between her and Jack. If you could see it in the electrical signals between them, a demented mirroring. Running out of range, the dogs milled again; and the high fence made diamond shadows on their backs.

"Not bad," Robert said. "Eh Helen?"

Helen squinted at the washed-out sky. "He's very clever," she said. "I suppose we'll be able to do that to people, soon enough. Of course, the lumps and wires will probably give it away."

Robert laughed.

It paid to remember the point. Remember the facts—espionage—remember that it wasn't just the demented experiments of madmen. They were fighting against a greater evil, and it all washed out in the end.

Alex, that strange creature, was on something right now, she thought. It explained the vast and vacant look in his eyes, and the way his hands did not shake. When the dogs came back, he knelt down, muddying his trousers, and scratched one behind the ears. It allowed him.

They all stared at Alex, but Alex didn't move. Finally the dog-man cleared his throat. Alex looked up, and something in his sea-green eyes was all at once very present, present and cutting and cruel, and the dog-man stepped back. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

Then, at last, they walked back to their waiting cars.


	5. its pleading

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning: disturbing themes
> 
> (see end note for more specifics [will have spoilers]!)

"Please, stop," it said. Sometimes it was a man. Sometimes a woman. It didn't matter, they all said the same thing. Keith just kept asking, asking, and Helen knew just how much those words could burrow under your skin, telling you to give up secrets. Everyone had secrets. Everyone had something they wished they could die rather than tell. Sometimes they died. But they always told.

Helen took notes, and thought about asking Jack for his advice. He knew a bit about formulae; as a demon with a mind as large and complex as swamp trees with its roots exposed must. He'd been very interested in the project that disabled mobility, as though something about the hulking, shrunken creatures had inspired him. It would probably be in the government's best interests to tell Jack to give her everything he could; but she did not quite trust him not to twist it. And she did not quite trust the government not to use it.

It was these words that did it, these words that Keith spoke. Of course she trusted the government. Trusted their intentions, anyhow, and that was almost the same thing. She wrote notes on the subject's reactions. That's what it was now: just a subject. That's what it would be until this was done. It was lucky, at least, that this would be done with quickly. She knew of the experiments going on in the hospitals. Knew how the doctors there could keep you still and quiet for however long they wanted, while they eroded your mind, carefully, with a file, a file made of words. And darkness, and lack of hope, perhaps; and drugs, of course, for no one's will could continue beyond that.

* * *

She took a break for lunch. It was impossible to think of anything after those words, and those notes she had taken that would soon be blacked out. She shut the door of her office and locked it behind her, the key in her hand, clinking on its ring. She had keys for everything, tucked away in her purse, a small purse, unintimidating. Too small to hold much; but the keys inside them held worlds. She slipped off her shoes and stockings and put her feet on the desk, knocking her piles of notes into a drift like snow with the tracks of cars through them, and wished she could make the light above her less harsh, could do something to it at all. But, there, it rang above her and unless she wanted it to turn off, she could do nothing. She pulled out a sandwich and ate without tasting. The words were in her mind. She got up, clicked to play her music instead; she liked to keep it here for times like this. But the words seemed to slide in around the tune, turning everything into that constant statement. Helen was not guilty. She had no secrets to give. Not ones they wanted.

At any rate, she could still lie.

* * *

She looked through her projects. The tune was still playing, in the background; terrible and full of cheer; but she ignored it. She could pick another, any other. A click of the barrel, Russian roulette: what's it gonna be? She paged through, her fingers sliding on grey print. _Strange sightings in London during the fire of 1889. The fall of Tower Bridge was described as being heralded by a burst of energy and sound more reminiscent of an atomic bomb than anything that could have conceivably existed in the Victorian age. Countless feathers, both white and black, were found near the scene, along with a body, later collected on the bridge itself, only described as horrible—haunting—grotesque—calling up inexplicable fear in everyone who viewed it. Though the body had been collected, there was no further information regarding it; the story was it had somehow been lost._ Not true, of course: not the last. They'd found it, froze it, cut it to pieces, gathered the feathers. Years ago, but they still had it, locked away in a cold morgue. There were substances in that body that had created the basis for any number of things. You could create a towering rage or a despair. She had seen two of those feathers, once, shining dully under glass. Like night and the moon. They had been right about the feeling; it was strange how the mere sight of something so outwardly innocuous could provoke such fear and horror. Not so strange, was it? She'd seen it enough herself. Felt it. Felt those eyes and those words, worse than anything she'd witnessed today, tossed casually about. At least this was for a noble purpose. At least.

They called the body angel, for its wings. They called the body worse than that, because it had both cunt and cock. She pitied it, for its helpless rage. And she pitied those who signed up to study it, and ended up in the long line of deceased, killed in a fury, driven mad by something already dead. She thought she knew how it worked: like a dentist's drill, into your brain. Perhaps, at that, it was not dead, not fully. Perhaps it had its own thin lure, something to tug into those sparking electrical impulses. Some instinct left to work, like a machine still continuing its last query infinitely. Helen would not pick that project. She had no wish to end up screaming of purity, of burning London to the ground, nothing but a shell with another mind inside it.

_Was it one of you?_ She thought to Jack, idly. _One of those terrible creatures you are. Is that what happens when you die; when something powerful enough can kill you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning: disturbing themes.
> 
> — non-explicit torture.
> 
> — some crude language — in the context of Helen thinking about how (spoiler) people have called Ash/Angela bad things because of their being intersex. NO SPECIFICS of those bad things are mentioned, but it's still an uncomfortable moment. ... Yup Ash & Angela are back... in a manner of speaking.


	6. the sky

Ciel Phantomhive, the Watch-Dog for the Queen, had died long before project SPIDER arrived to take his place. Long before this slow war, long before this enemy, but there had always been other wars, other enemies.

"Will we win?" Helen asked Jack, and it was night, and the lights were out. She stood by the window peering into the soft emptiness of the sky, watching the moon.

"How should I know?" Jack said, with a shrug. "You should have asked for that, if it mattered so much to you; and not a job."

"Does it matter if we do?" she said.

"Of course not," Jack said. "Nothing matters. You think you'll keep one empire, destroy another, and somehow you'll root out the basis of human cruelty?" he laughed, low, in his mouth; like the hum of a saw. "It's been around long before your people were even a blot on the ancient maps. Nothing lacks cruelty, nothing that exists."

 _Even the moon?_ She might ask, but she knew already of its cruelty. It pulled her down, and so to kill the pain she sipped from her glass of lukewarm water and paced in the dead of night. Blood soaked its way through everything that stopped it up, and Jack's attention was always sharper, these times. His eyes, which followed her, seemed hungrier, and his breath was sweet and cloying when he leaned down beside her to serve her dinner, too close—closer than he would otherwise come. He did not like her, she knew, and she hated him; but on these occasions their asynchronous orbit would converge. She didn't know which one followed the other, or if they both mirrored each other like electrons, twinned; but these were the times they almost touched. Almost.

She cracked open the window and put her fingers through the small opening, wishing she could fling it wide and step free, step onto solid air. But the glass was still, and the air was still with sluggish movement, and Jack, sitting in the chair with legs crossed, languid, like an animal scenting the wind, was still. And she was still also.

"What do you hate the most?" Helen said.

Jack blinked at her, slow, and the stretch of his smile was like a gash. He didn't answer.

Sirens went by, louder with the window open. She waited for them to pass. Looked at her hand shadowed against the shadowed sky, wrapped carefully by night, which promised such false kindness. Only illusions, then. Nothing but. She brought her glass to her lips, tilted her throat, and when she was done drinking she leaned to put the glass down between them and Jack's mouth was parted, and his fangs were out. His eyes, in the night, glittered like candle-flames. She stopped, hand against the wet, against the glass and the tepid water which tasted like metal, and watched him, and they breathed there without moving, either toward or away. This was how it always was, neither toward nor away, and she wondered what would make it tip, for something so carefully balanced must need only the slightest nudge. If he did not hate her so much, with the same disdain he showed all humans with the curl of his lip, perhaps he would try to take her body as he had taken her mind. Perhaps, if he hated her _more_ , he would try. She did not know what it was that stopped him; except, of course, she had been very clear when they contracted that she wanted only his help and not him. And so he had become everything his help was, mockingly; servile and mocking. Her anger, which had washed upward like the tide, drew out. She pulled her hand from the cup, stepped back and went to the window, and Jack didn't move, but his eyes, crawling, moved, and she felt their heat.


	7. all tides

Alex was at the door when she stepped out next morning, and she thought she saw him watching her. Of course he watched her. He was a man, and he watched her, and she watched him watching her. But this was different. Perhaps it was that the drive over had been that quiet hiss of tyres over pavement, rumbling intermittently over cobblestones. Through the mirror, she had seen Jack as he drove her; seen his flared nostrils and the way he tracked her movement inside the car, and she had almost wanted to open the window so it would not be so close between them; that smell of blood. Perhaps Alex could smell it too. She'd heard some men could. But what Jack had done should have made him look past her like the others, but this was too piercing, too precise. He had been standing there, outside the blank doors, as though he was trying to figure out how to get in, as though he were Theseus and not a part of the monster itself, facing down those blank plain doors and those walls. When the car pulled up he turned, and bending took the door-handle and opened it before Jack could. Helen gripped her bag and wondered, if she scratched his arm right here, in the street, and screamed, would anyone come looking. But Jack was in the front seat, and so she was safe, and so her anger was worse, for being afraid still.

Alex said nothing. Just looked at her, and she remembered how odd he was at the best of times, and this was not the best of times by any means. The bags under his eyes were huge and purpled over the thin stretch of his skin, and his hands shook. Still he stepped back, like a gentleman, and even bowed as she exited the car—just slightly, and, Helen thought, almost unconsciously, though it could have been mocking. She'd seen mocking, and she'd seen tired, and she wondered if it were possible to be both.

Through the window, Jack was watching; a prickle on her spine. She could feel it, could feel it tugging low in her belly like a hook on a fish, and tried not to turn to look. But the animal threat of it was too strong, and so she turned. He was not looking at her, but past her, at Alex standing on the curb with shaking hands, flat-glass eyes on both countenances. Jack's she understood. He was possessive with things that were his. That was why she'd ordered him not to enter these buildings, not to disturb her during work hours; and he would obey, of course, unless the higher duties of the contract forbade it. Alex she could not fathom. He was brittle, brittle in a way she could hardly imagine, though it should have been a sensible observation, seeing him in that grey suit echoing the sky.

"Helen," he said at last, looking at her, and his manner was brusque and companionable, as though she were any other coworker, and she smiled at him uncomfortably.

"Alex," she said. It occurred to her that she'd never yet seen him come into work, nor leave it; he always seemed to exist, liminally, on scraps in the undeground boxes. She did not know if he was one of the mad, passionate ones, or one of the petty, ordinary ones, or something entirely different, and not knowing made her afraid. He was dangerous, he could do anything at a moment, without provocation; she knew this. But he had never done anything to her. If anything good had been able to exist within those underground boxes, she might almost have called him a good man. It made something thin and sickly and horrible rise on her tongue, and she noticed only when Alex looked past her again that Jack was still there, waiting in the idling car, still watching them. No. Watching Alex, and his teeth were bared.

Helen grabbed Alex's arm and towed him inside, the both of them holding up their passes instinctively as they went into the lair of the beast.


	8. be hard

"You work with mental confusion, don't you?" Alex said, as they walked through the hall. They had come in together, and he did not go on ahead, or let her go, but walked beside her. Helen hooked her fingers into the cool metal loop between her purse and the strap, and tried to resent him and not to wonder if he would be found dead soon enough. If Jack would be responsible. It was impossible to know why his jealousy had been roused, by the opening of a door; he had smelled Robert's scent on her often enough and only talked snidely of the human rut. She did not even know Alex. She had never fetched him coffee and he had never fetched her coffee and so they had never drugged each other, even accidentally, and perhaps that meant something. Though she doubted sometimes that Alex would even notice.

"Yes," she said, resigning herself to the conversation and the soft tap of their shoes and feeling the busy slide of people all around, working, humming through, ants in their hall. She was almost the government scientist again and nothing more, and she could afford to be generous.

"You work with aging, wasn't it? Unnatural types of?"

"Did," Alex said. "They were happy enough with what I could offer; but Philip decided to move me to dependency. He does _love_ his little games." His words were bitter, and surprisingly mundane; like an ordinary man, like someone she could come to know. It surprised her.

"What do you do?"

"Oh, torture, brutality; the usual."

She raised one eyebrow at him, slightly facing his direction as they edged their way around a hall commotion and someone lying on the floor, curled up, screaming.

"Honestly now," she chided.

"Honesty is my middle name," Alex said. He opened the heavy door of the emergency stair. "Coming?"

She usually took the elevator. She _always_ took the elevator; but she followed him without thinking and only wondered why when the door swung closed behind him, leaving a great and echoing silence where the screaming had been.

"Honestly," Alex said, "we work with substances that enhance dependency."

"Ah, I see," Helen said, as they started down the stairs. "It's not a habit, it's research?"

Alex, walking slow enough but taking the steps two at a time with his height, turned to cast her an ironic smile. "Dependency of the subject on another person. I'm sure you can imagine the applicable uses of suggestability."

"Of course," Helen agreed, absent. "It sounds of interest, actually. I've just been contemplating another project myself. Is it worth it?"

"Not a bit," Alex said. "I only stay for the benefits. The work disgusts me."

"Ask for a transfer?"

He scoffed. "From Philip?"

Helen did not really know Philip. He had appeared a few times, around the edges of their group, frowning and bleached out like old wash. He had struck her as no more terrible than the rest of the crowd, though he had rank over those she associated with, and so he was more dangerous by default. He'd barked out orders to the whole group, wanted to look at their reports, which were already shaking apart word on word before the ink was stamped to cover it all up. She kept her head down like the rest and waited for him to leave. He'd snagged Alex, she remembered now, each and every time, as the others filed away, and she had taken note of it but thought nothing of it. Purposefully thought nothing of it. It was important to think nothing, so that all their work could continue. Justified work. But in her head she heard Alex's frank blunt voice: the work disgusts me. It thrilled her, like being a little girl and saying something inappropriate in church. Just quietly, and when she was alone. Look where that had got her.

"Is Philip one to watch out for?" she asked.

"For you? No," Alex said, and they reached the next landing. Helen gripped her hand tightly on the rail, the cool metal, thick and painted and nonliving.

"For me?" she said. "He doesn't have to want me to be dangerous."

Alex looked at her coolly. "You think he doesn't?"

"Want me?" she barked a laugh. "I know it when I see it. He doesn't. You don't either. Should that mean something to me?"

She waited for a show of anger; or perhaps he would leave; the door to the next level was there and he could walk out. Or he could be worse, and push her down the stairs, and if she was in any real danger, Jack would save her. But he did none of those things, and he did not feign ignorance, and he did not sneer.

So that was an answer, of a sort.

They climbed down the next set of stairs.

"Is he," she said at last. She felt strangely like a diver, reaching down into the sunless parts of the sea, searching.

"Yes," Alex said.

She could say nothing. She had nothing to say.


	9. the sea

She did not have sex with Robert that day. But she almost wished to. It was not their relationship, not quite, that she could have sex with him on days like this. She was not worried about getting pregnant by accident. She did not think she would be alive to worry about it soon enough. And Robert was always careful.

Still, they were merely colleagues, and nothing more; and she could find no comfort in him but the physical, and now not even that. She ached for a touch, something gentle and grounding like the tip of fingers on her arm, light and steady and there; but she had no one that could give her that.

Her family might, but they did not know her. No. Her family couldn't; their touch was too heavy, their grip too unsteady; they knew they had lost her and so they held her tighter still.

She would have to visit them tomorrow. She would have to, and she stood for an endless span of time at the closet looking between her everyday clothes and the one churidaar she hadn't thrown out. It was printed bright and gaudy and she had gotten tired of being so bright. It was not her. But she would wear it anyway, tomorrow, and so she threw it angrily onto the bed.

"Iron it," she said.

"Yes, mistress," Jack replied. He picked the pieces up over his arm, treating it with utmost care. Purposefully, because he knew she couldn't help but watch, and see the difference. It was as mocking as he was.

"Won't you call me Helen?" she said.

"Of course, Helen, whatever you wish."

She walked into the other room. She preferred _mistress_ , though it angered her, for it was the only thing Jack said that was not mocking. He was quite serious, and that was what she was to him, and so there were no illusions.

A low chuckle followed her out the door. Then Jack followed, proper and calm, as though he had not heard her thoughts. And put everything onto the ironing board, and pressed it flat.

* * *

He drove her part way there, and then she walked the rest. She did not want her mother and father and brothers and whatever cousins and uncles and aunts might be visiting to look and exclaim over the government car, and she did not want them to see Jack. She knocked sharply on the door, but before she had even rapped twice the door was being whisked open and her mother hugged her on the doorstep. "Deepika, I thought you would never arrive! Food is waiting."

She did not say anything, but smiled and followed her mother inside. It was an unspoken rule: she did not argue about names when she came in dressed in her one churidaar. She was being Deepika today, and if she was not perfect, she was at least valued, and that was something. The weight of her job circled like a stormcloud, like a hawk over its prey, and she turned aside purposefully, and helped make paratha and serve chai and everything was almost fine. She even laughed, and she did not remember the last time she had laughed, and when Dhruv came and called her his favorite sister she said "I'm your _only_ sister"—like she always did—and did not say he was her favorite brother. What would she say, even if she could speak of her job? _Sometimes we put earplugs in to drown out the screams, and my favorite subjects are the animals, because their pain is simpler, so much easier to put aside or to imagine away._ It wasn't, though. If anything, it was merely more grotesque, yet that at least offered some mental relief, some imaginative avenue down which to dwell.

No one noticed anything amiss. Only—as they passed the upstairs hall, listening to the ever-present chatter of voices—her grandmother, who with sharp eyes stared her down. "Deepika, something is wrong," her grandmother said.

"Nothing is wrong, dado," she said.

"Then why are you so sad? You've been sad since you got this job; since last year I've seen you grow sadder. One day you'll disappear. Won't you change your mind?" Her voice was hushed, quiet, quick. Helen pinched her palms with her nails and breathed shakily.

"I can't," she said, which was not what she was going to say at all, and she burst into tears.

* * *

Laid up on her grandmother's bed with the curtains drawn, Helen sipped her tea while they sat together quietly, and felt the brush moving softly through her hair, and then those firm, effective movements plaiting it down her back, and neither spoke. It was what she had told herself she could not have; that no one could offer. She wondered how she had fooled herself so effectively, and how, after this, she would leave the house in two days and climb back into the government car and meet Jack's eyes.

She did not know how, but she would; for if she didn't, the contract would be over, and she would be dead before another day.


	10. black handiwork

Helen left work earlier than usual. It was still almost eight, and would be dark outside, when she left. She wandered through the corridors, abstractedly, not knowing what it was she chased until she saw Alex, sitting on a bench. It was stuffed and covered in plastic, and there were slits of use in it, and the stuffing was coming out, noxious and webby. He was sitting on a bench, and he was looking better—or floating and faraway, which was as _better_ as he ever looked. But it was a false illusion, and when she sat beside him, he turned to her with a soft presence in his eyes. He was here. He was more _here_ , perhaps, than any of them; and perhaps that was the problem. No one was meant to live in a maze indefinitely.

"Helen," he said, which was all. He never called her _Miss Abberline_. None of them did; with the others she understood, for it was part of the strangeness that was this job, and the jocular over-familiarity it engendered, and the way they erased the name with most presence of past or future or family so as to create the impression to everyone that nothing mattered but the job. It was a lie and everyone knew it, but they played the same game; Alex, though. Alex, Helen thought, was not playing the same game, and never had been. She wondered what he _was_ playing, and what benefits he could ever get that could make up for a work that disgusted him.

"Alex," she said. "How are you?"

"As well as anyone is," Alex said.

She smiled grimly.

"Yes," she said. "Me, too."

He smiled at her, a bare wisp of a thing, and she had the sudden distinct impression that if he were the sort to touch he would have taken her hand. He did not touch anyone, she recalled. Not overtly, but he used none of the casual gestures of comradery and power that the other men did; and no one dared to touch him because of his aloofness, or perhaps that sense that something was _off_ about him, which was undeniable. No, but he had walked into Philip's office and she had not seen him leave again, and she wondered.

His hand: his hand was fine-boned, like the rest of him, and frail, like an old man's hand, though he was young. The skin was stretched, and his nails were painted. She had never noticed. Painted like a woman might, to look natural, if her nails were bad. It reminded her of something; that empty milk skin; something natural, in a way that felt unnatural, for she rarely left the city and yet with Alex, all she could think of to describe him was everything that should be outside this box.

Something that hides, quietly, in forests, delicate and forbidding.

That was what it reminded her of, Helen thought: that soft sickly color; it was corpse plant by the path, that one afternoon when she was very small, playing with her cousins in America. He was corpse plant; that strange unwavering creature that bent its head down like tears, taking its nutrients from decay.

And from that moment on she wondered what would happen if he were touched, the way no one else quite seemed to dare; wondered if his skin would shake and bruise just from that single touch and unfurl a truer dark that had been waiting, underneath.


	11. is blind

"You should not get too close to Alex," Jack said.

"Jealousy is ugly on you," Helen said. "He's my coworker. I have no interest in him." It was almost true. She had no interest in him, the way she ought to have an interest in a human being; but as a botanical study, something to dissect, he was unfathomably interesting. It was mere boredom, she thought; the other men would hardly keep her interest. They were very intelligent men, but they did not know how to speak; or at least not to her.

She thought it was rather that they had lost the ability. They may have had it, once; but wandering the recursive corridors they had built, they had forgotten. Their words were forgotten, and hers had been too, she knew, for when she looked at her own notes, before the censors spilled their pointed ink, she saw only the rambling of madmen. Somehow Alex had made her realize this, and she had begun to struggle toward words again. But Jack seemed enraged by it. Perhaps that was why.

"Perhaps it is," Jack said. "It doesn't matter why, does it. I have to attend to your safety, and _Alex_ ," he spat the word, "is not safe for you. You wouldn't want something to have to be done about him."

"I thought you would have already, you were so angry," Helen said. "When he opened the door. Damn, he's a man, he's allowed to open the door for a woman isn't he. I thought I would come back and he would be gone, and no one would say a word. They never do."

Jack growled at her, really growled; and the lights she had just turned on flickered out.

"Don't be petty," Helen said. She walked to her favorite chair; the chair she liked to read on when she got the chance, which was never. She sat back, enjoying the languorous fold of breath, in and out, as she closed her eyes, enjoying her brazen lack of fear. She was too tired to be afraid; not now, not of her demon. There were too many greater things to fear.

"You f—ing human, I'll tear you to bits. You think I care that much for one measly little speck of a soul like yours?" Jack said. His rage was wild; it knocked the framed pictures asunder. Rattled the doors. "I got more filling meat a hundred years ago, in alley rats. I can pull this whole city down on your head, and torture everything you care about until it snaps. How would you like to see your own little brother in one of those subject rooms?"

She opened her eyes. There was a glow, something infernal for it came from no source she could name, and it lit his hair and his sharp teeth, which were all unsheathed, an entire mouth of serrated teeth like a saw. She clenched her hands against the armrest of the chair, and breathed, and breathed, and the entire room was nothing more than darkness for an instant, and panic beyond that, and then she laughed, wild and harsh. She bared her throat—which was covered, always, by unfashionably high collars or with her scarf—and the sigil on it sparked to brilliant life.

"You do that?" she hissed furiously. "You will _never_ get my soul. You'll choke on it until you're dead. I swear it." They watched each other, wary, and she could see his claws and she knew her own nails were snapped open as though she could really manage to gut him.

"Now," Helen said at last. "Live up to your aesthetics and tell me what your f—ing problem is instead of raging like a beast."

"Alex is not what he seems," Jack said. "He's dangerous."

"So you've said," Helen replied coolly. "So kill him, then; if it is really endangering our contract. But you won't. Or—can't?"

Jack grimaced at her.

"What is he?" Helen said.

"Nothing," Jack said. "Go. Put away your things. I'll make supper."

He strode—almost stomped—into the other room and Helen almost laughed again; at the impotence of it, and the very real threat; her blood singing on the edge of fear and exhilaration. _Will it be like this when he kills me?_ She thought. She thought she had been dreading it. It had weighed so deep, as deep as a stone, but suddenly she saw that it did not matter. She would die, and he would take her, and that was that, wasn't it. Until then, he really was hers.


	12. white eye

"I'm taking my days off," she told Alex. "All of them. I never have before, and there are—" well, there would be as many as Jack arranged for; as many as she ordered; up to a point. She knew she had to go back. It was part of her contract, this filth, this noble work, and she hated that it would be tied with her until her bones broke. Still, she could take a break. Almost everyone did.

"Is that so?" Alex said. He didn't say anything more, but watched her, and for a moment, there was that companionship, a gentle teasing grin, and then only the mask of tiredness again.

"I want you to come with me," she said: and there it was. The words were out, they could not be unsaid.

Alex did not bother feigning any reaction he did not have. He was not surprised; she knew and he knew that something like this had been waiting.

"You won't," Alex said at last.

"Why," Helen said. Leaning against the bare wall of Alex's office, unlocked when she had come to corner him. As though he'd been expecting her. "Because you're a demon? —or an angel?"

Alex laughed shortly; he put down his paperwork to laugh and his shoulders shook and for a moment she wondered if he was really crying, how pained he sounded, but when he looked up his eyes were dry.

"An angel," he said, and his voice was sharp—sharp as winter wind. "That's what you think I am. Seeing this."

Helen shrugged. She did not really feel as brazen as she acted, but she could not play at timidity. Either he would say yes or he wouldn't. She felt that he would say yes.

"I think you need the time off too," she said. "If Philip will let you, that is."

"Philip…" said Alex. "Philip will not be a problem."

"Good," Helen said. She bit her lip, suddenly unsure how to leave gracefully, or if she should even try. Alex watched her, an interest suddenly focussed as she felt the red bead swelling on her lips, and she knew. A tension in her shoulders relaxed, suddenly, and she sighed. "So you're a demon," she said.

"You don't miss a thing, do you," Alex said. He was still watching her lips. He walked around the space of his desk in the cramped office and dabbed carefully at the blood with one finger; looked at it speculatively and then licked it off. "Yes," he said. "Quite a fine choice," he said. Like she was some kind of wine.

"Don't you dare," she said.

"What?" Mild, calculating. His sea-green eyes shifting as though there were cloud-shadows on them.

"Act like you're agreeing because you want me. As though you're a liar. I've seen too much of you."

"I am a liar," Alex said.

"No more than anyone," Helen said, and Alex smiled, twisted, ugly. For the first time she was almost afraid of him. He no longer seemed so pitiful, or so fragile. Yet she was glad, fiercely glad, to have ripped open his guise to the _something_ underneath, even if it were no more stable and complete than any of the sky's moods.

"I'm no cheat," Alex said at last. And he inclined his head very slightly. "I know how to respect another's territory. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"I have nothing I want to hear," Helen said. "I just want to…"

"What?" Alex said, and the glitter in his eyes was bright, painfully bright. For a moment they looked almost true-blue.

"To speak, real words, true words."

"So do," Alex said. His hands were clasped, neatly, behind his back, but leaned toward her as though he were on a wire, pulled. There was something baited, something animal in his look she'd never seen, and she wondered at it. But he did not remind her of Jack. He was too flighty. No, it was—birds looking at shiny things. His mouth was open and the teeth at the edge of his mouth was sharp with fangs.

"It isn't justified," Helen said. "What we do here. It is evil."

"Yessss…" Alex sighed, and his lashes closed. He looked as though he were drugged. He always looked as though he were drugged, but this time he was close enough to touch, and there was sweat on his pallid skin and he was leaning back. Unsteady. His hand gripped hers.

Under the painted nails, a thin sliver of black was showing.

She touched his face. Ran her finger across his forehead and collected the salt sweat, and Alex shivered.

"Are you okay?" she said.

"I told you," Alex said tightly. "As okay as anyone." He did not open his eyes. His breathing was rapid. She held his arm, worried he would collapse, and said nothing.

At last, Alex stepped away. Stepped away and stacked his paperwork and slid down into the chair behind it, and he looked tired, so old and tired, and his hands shook.

"What have they been doing to you?" she said. Quiet. She leaned over, arms on the desk, resting her shaking legs against it.

"I told you that too," Alex said. "Experimenting with dependency." His eyes opened, slits, and the pale fire peeked out from under them. She swallowed.

"And the soul of Philip is enough for that?" she asked. She thought it was Philip. She was almost certain. Alex shook his head, smiling ever so slightly. "Not just a soul. Something more important than that."

Her eyes widened. She didn't know what to imagine; what, in fact, could be more important to any demon than a soul.


	13. your skin

Jack was waiting by the curb, of course. The engine turning over. Warning. Her driver had stepped out of the car to open her door, and there he was, waiting in uniform, poised, obsequious. When he saw Helen, his eyes flashed, but he bowed: a real bow, more than was necessary, real and mocking and spiteful. He opened the door. "Mistress," he said, in a low voice. He shut the door, slid into the seat in front and they pulled out. "I hear we're going on holiday. With _guests_."

"Yes," Helen said.

Jack cursed, very quietly, and she pretended she didn't hear, and he pretended he hadn't spoken.

"Now that it's all settled," Helen said, "what was your problem with Alex. The mere fact of his interacting with me? Or personal history?"

"Of a sort," Jack said. "Not with _him_." His lip curled again.

Helen knew the flavors of Jack's scorn, and the one she saw reflecting from the car mirror was his most base and disdainful, the one he used when he looked at humans. It had stung, at first, with the memories of other looks, and when she had realized he bestowed it on every class and color alike it had not stung any less. But she had understood it.

"He is a demon," Helen said. "Or is there status in hell too. Of course there is." She laughed bitterly. "It wouldn't do for it to be better than earth in any respect."

"No," said Jack, coldly. "It wouldn't."

"So?" Helen leaned back. Tapped her fingers idly on the glass. It had rained, earlier, but the sun had been hot, and dried the dust on the window in streaks.

"A mongrel, mistress. Dirty and common. _Human_ stock."

"Is that so," Helen said. She did not consider herself moved to anger often. She did not raise her voice and she certainly did not raise her fists. But his words angered her. She said nothing, and they drove through the traffic in silence, the slide of cars past, and the pedestrians beyond them, mere blurs. Jack was trying to divert her attention. "And who _do_ you have a problem with, if not him?"

"The beast he carries on a lead," Jack said. "Like a circus act. The conjoined twins. Death would be better."

"Death is always better," Helen said. "But many don't get it. Not when they would like. Not when they beg."

"Of course, mistress," Jack said, his words a bug's smear across the glass. "You would know all about that, wouldn't you."

"Yes," Helen said.

Jack said nothing. Almost surprised. He lifted his gaze, and met hers through the mirror. There was something thoughtful in his look. "You admit it," he said. "No more 'noble purpose', then."

"You heard us speak."

"A common torturer, twisting the knife," Jack said.

"Yes," Helen said. Still meeting his eyes. Calm. Quiet.

"Disgusting and vile," Jack said.

"As you say," Helen said. "I am all that. I admit it. What have you now?"

"My admiration," Jack said, and it was that which turned her head aside.

* * *

She waited until she had locked the door of her flat behind her and hung up her purse with its ring of keys. Then she beckoned to her demon, bade him kneel, and slapped him, once, very sharply. "You don't refer to Alex like that," she said, so he knew. "Not in front of me. I don't suppose I can control your actions when I'm looking elsewhere."

"You could, mistress," Jack said. He was calm and unfazed as though his cheek didn't still sting with a blow, as though he wasn't kneeling on his heels at her feet. "You could do whatever you please, within the contract."

"Yes," Helen said. "I know that very well. You may go."

So Jack got up, and bowed again. "Mistress," he said, and went to fix supper.

Helen sagged, one hand gripping tight to the coat-hook on the wall. A terrible fury and grief rose in her, and she wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> notes: The secret government project in this fic is basically real-life Project MKUltra under another name, even down to the details on certain experiments.
> 
> It was also inspired by the nonfiction book "The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson
> 
> / Yes, Ciel is Alex - if you're curious to know what is going on in his part of the plot, the next story in the series, "Slipping" will be posted soon


End file.
